Li Ke

Li Ke is a former Eastern admiral, the Pharmacist’s husband, Jun’er’s father, and a human spirit preserved within Ultus. Chapter 253 calls the missing husband Mo Liansheng, but Chapters 857–903 consistently identify the same family history and Ultus-bound figure as Li Ke; the corpus never explains whether the earlier name is an alias or a continuity error. This article follows the later sustained identification without pretending the discrepancy is resolved. Unlike Jun Yongye, Li Ke was a human master before death, so his will remains partly independent of the sword that sustains him.

Biography

An admiral lost before his daughter’s birth

Before appearing directly, the Pharmacist describes her husband as a powerful man lost on an ambitious military expedition while she was pregnant. The early account names him Mo Liansheng. Later, Lan Qing recognizes the spirit as Admiral Li Ke and the Pharmacist, Jun’er, Ultus, and disappearance history all align with the earlier husband. No chapter supplies a name change, secret identity, or correction, so treating the two names as definitively separate people would contradict the family narrative while calling one a proven alias would add unsupported certainty. (Chapters 253 and 729, 857–861)

Li Ke had pursued achievement rather than remain safely with his wife. The alien planets captured him and tried to extract value from his body and genes. He resisted by driving his soul into Ultus, which had once recognized him as master. The transfer saved an imprint of his will but could not preserve his body, and years of darkness gradually drained the spirit. His survival is therefore postmortem continuity, not proof that the expedition left him physically alive. (Chapters 729 and 857–861)

A guide recovered with Ultus

When humanity recovers Ultus, Li Ke manifests as a faint, scholarly figure. Lan Qing knows him as an important older classmate and military predecessor. Li Ke immediately supplies knowledge gathered while trapped near Monarch: he has observed alien evolution, recognized ancient immortal inheritances, and learned portions of Ultus’s hidden Strategy. His information makes him strategically vital even though his form can barely remain coherent. (Chapters 857–860)

He asks Lan Qing to care for and even marry the Pharmacist after his fading, hoping she will not follow him into death. The request comes from love and despair but disregards how firmly she still chooses him. After hearing her suffering, he withdraws the pressure and asks her to live, grow, and preserve the distant possibility of restoring him. He also decides not to meet Jun’er, fearing that appearing only to vanish will damage the family she has finally found. That choice is protective in intent and painful in consequence; it denies both father and daughter a direct meeting. (Chapters 859–862)

Passing the blade without surrendering all will

Li Ke persuades Ultus to accept Lan Qing, whose dharma and disciplined foundation fit the leading Banishing Blade. Once the transfer is made, Li Ke expects to lose the energy needed for a free manifestation, although a mark will remain. His relationship to the sword differs from Jun Yongye and Xuanyuan Shishi: they are consciousnesses generated and governed by their blades, while Li Ke is a deceased former bearer whose independent soul was emblazoned into Ultus. (Chapters 861–862 and 877)

That independence matters in battle. When Lan Qing is frozen and cannot respond, Li Ke makes Ultus strike backward, forcing the Violet Prince to avoid a mutually damaging exchange. He can act as an extension of the new bearer because both wills are linked through the weapon, but he is not a second full-strength combatant. Ultus supplies the force; his fading spirit supplies a moment of judgment. (Chapter 877)

Dangerous knowledge under an ethical lock

Years beside the aliens teach Li Ke how they transmute vital energy. He proposes using purified high-level crystals to push Lan Qing and the Pharmacist toward Nirvana, while warning that alien poison and human incompatibility make the procedure unpredictable. More importantly, he demands that the method be erased afterward. If ordinary Adepts learn to consume others’ vitality for advancement, human greed could recreate the civilization they are fighting. (Chapters 862–864)

The coalition accepts his condition over the Pontiff’s interest in preserving the secret. Li Ke then reveals the principles of the Banishing Strategy stored across Ultus and the other swords. He is an expert guide, not an omniscient author: even years inside Ultus expose only part of its immeasurable memory, and he cannot guarantee what the completed Strategy will do. He repeatedly warns that hurried cultivation can break bodies or provoke universal protogenia. (Chapters 863–864 and 880–889)

A spirit given a place to remain

Li Ke helps the four sword bearers decide to merge fully with their blades and supports the successful Banishing Strategy. After Monarch’s fall, he argues against immediately destroying Europa because its immortal qi can nourish recovered primordial spirits. His advice is strategic and openly personal: he wants a body and ordinary family life again, however remote the chance. The immortal realm is retained under the sword bearers’ control. (Chapters 889–903)

The ending does not confirm that Li Ke receives a new body. Instead, the Pharmacist brings his Ultus-sustained spirit into the immortal realm, where it can exist despite the sword’s place in the surrounding formation. She remains there with him, and later dialogue describes the couple as together but largely private. Li Ke therefore ends as a stable spirit in the immortal realm, not as a resurrected mortal and not as a vanished sword memory. (Chapters 902–903)

Appearance and personality

Li Ke’s manifested spirit is tall and lithe, with a gentle, scholarly bearing rather than a conventionally heroic face. At first he flickers and can barely hold recognizable form. Joining Ultus more closely later makes the image almost solid, but it remains a facsimile without a physical body. Pain, regret, and intelligence are conveyed through posture and voice even when ordinary eyes are absent from the spectral form. (Chapters 857–861 and 880)

He is refined, analytical, proud of his former ability, and capable of painful self-criticism. Ambition took him from his family; captivity gives him years to understand that cost. His later choices combine selflessness and control: he wants the Pharmacist protected, refuses to let her die with him, withholds himself from Jun’er, and requires dangerous science to be erased. He also admits selfish hope when defending the immortal realm. That honesty keeps his ethical guidance from becoming a claim that he has transcended personal desire. (Chapters 859–864 and 902–903)

Disciplines and abilities

Ultus-bound spirit

Li Ke preserved his soul by impressing it into Ultus before the aliens could destroy it. The blade sustains memory, communication, limited manifestation, and occasional independent action. Separation or excessive use makes the image fade, and he says the remaining soul will eventually dissolve without a stronger source of nourishment. The immortal realm stabilizes that problem by providing immortal qi, but no physical restoration occurs on page. (Chapters 857–862, 877, and 902–903)

Banishing Strategy knowledge

As Ultus’s former master, he accesses the leading blade’s record of the Strategy and explains its principles to the four new bearers. He can identify resonance, advise cultivation thresholds, and coordinate the swords’ shared secrets. His knowledge remains incomplete until all four blades are present, and even then the actual energy demand exceeds surviving records. Guidance reduces ignorance; it does not make the Strategy safe or controllable by underprepared bodies. (Chapters 862–864 and 880–889)

Alien transmutation research

Captivity lets Li Ke observe how the aliens convert stolen vitality into advancement. He adapts a one-time human procedure using elite vital crystals, with explicit risks from poison, incompatibility, and greed. The process helps the required bearers advance, but he insists that its memory be destroyed after use. It is neither a general cultivation method nor evidence that Li Ke can personally transmute unlimited power as a spirit. (Chapters 863–864)

Relationships

• Pharmacist: His wife, known to him as little Yue. Their reunion turns strategic recovery into a reckoning with abandonment, grief, and the possibility of remaining together as spirits and immortals.
• Lan Qing: A younger military peer who once pursued Li Ke’s example and becomes Ultus’s new bearer. Li Ke trains, tests, and protects him while accepting that the sword’s living future belongs to another commander.
• Jun’er: His daughter, born after his disappearance. He watches her but refuses a direct introduction because he fears a second loss will harm her; the corpus does not show her choosing that distance herself.
• Jun Yongye: A fellow sword-associated guide with a different origin. Jun Yongye is Captus’s generated spirit, while Li Ke is an independent deceased human imprinted into Ultus.
• Lan Jue: One of the four bearers who relies on Li Ke’s Strategy knowledge and later preserves the immortal realm where Li Ke can remain with his family.

Items

• Ultus: The leading Banishing Blade, once mastered by Li Ke and later used to preserve his independent human spirit after the aliens destroyed his body.